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Anchor Text And Backlinks | The Medium In Keyword Research And SEO

Anchor Text, SEO And Keywords

If you're new to SEO you may have heard of the term anchor text. Just as well I'm sure you're familiar with high velocity terms such as keyword research and SEO (search engine optimization) too. These are the staples in this industry and terms that you can't ignore much less read any article without hearing some mention of them either. With that said, obviously there are elements of high degrees of importance surrounding these phrases. Now of course Google has already had a thing or two to say about all of this and that message has changed over and over and over again repeatedly covering a span of several years. Nevertheless, here we are today still engaged in great debate and discussion over this too and truth be told.. that conversation and debate isn't slowing down anytime soon.

If you're not doing your research then you're missing out on a critical element that is needed in this conversation. This research absolutely leads into the development of your anchor text which we'll get into shortly as well.

Anchor Text

Now in order to get the basics out of the way, let me explain what anchor text is for those that may be coming across this post that are unsure. Lets assume that you want to target the keyword phrase "blog tips". Anchor text and keywords go hand in hand to some degree. Anchor text is best explained as the clickable text in a link (etc. hyperlink). So for our example here (e.g. blog tips) now highlighted in blue is hyperlinked as a keyword phrase to candidwriter.com. The anchor text is: blog tips.

Natural Anchor Text

Now even though I've given an example of anchor text, there are rules and best practices as well. In the example that I provided, what I did was use "exact match" anchor text. So in my research, I see that "blog tips" is highly aligned to the content on my blog right ? Well here's a little history for you. Prior to the Google Hummingbird update, websites would basically build links using exact match anchor text. So hundreds to thousands of links in website link profiles were build with the same anchor's. If you're truly familiar with Google and it's tendencies, anything that looks like link manipulation is a red flag and Google is always watching. So bear in mind that building anchors without any diversification is a really bad idea.

These generic anchors won't have anything to do with any keyword that actually has volume, but it's a signal to Google that it's not being manipulated and those are signals that you want the search engine to see. Signals that reflect positively have a direct impact on how favorable Google views your website.

With that said, now that we've talked about anchors and keyword research, how does this impact backlinking ? Here's a reality for you.. You can write as much content as you want. You can make your headlines as juicy and appealing as possible. You can publish that content "everyday", but if you aren't building backlinks then you're not going to get anywhere with Google.

Backlinks And Backlinking

Everything that we've talked about prior to this all works together. Your research helps you to target keywords that are highly aligned to your website content. Your anchors reflect the keyword phrases that you've targeted and the backlinks that you build help Google to realize that you have different pages and different domains that are linking back to you for the keyword phrases that you are going after. As mentioned in our example earlier in the post about targeting "blog tips". I could go to a website like Quora and while answering a question, mention the keyword "blog tips" and link it back to a website page where I want to build backlinks to and once it's hyperlinked then credit is given for that link. On another note, determining whether this is dofollow or nofollow is another conversation altogether, but that's some insight into how the backlinking aspect of this conversation works.

Again, we're not talking about link manipulation, but moreso how anchors, your key word research and backlinks process all works together. Linking is a natural and common part of the Google recognition process. I do not condone for one second going on out and going after a ton of exact match anchors as that will damage your website in the long run, but also realize that it's not uncommon to do "some" exact match in your own link building, but best practice is to do it sparingly and let people naturally anchor links to your website when they are doing the linking.

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